Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Debate between Bill Esterson and Brian H. Donohoe

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend must have been reading my speech, because I was about to make exactly that point. He has made it for me. The reality of the naming and shaming policy is that it has not worked: it has not delivered an improvement in the enforcement of the national minimum wage. If 300,000 people are being paid less than the national minimum wage, Government Members should be ashamed of that.

[Mr Donohoe]

Even if they were paid the minimum wage, working for three hours a week does not, in any shape or form, allow them to live, does it?

[Bill Esterson]

We should undoubtedly do everything we can to encourage employers to pay a much higher rate. The real level of the national minimum wage has fallen year on year. I agree that we should push employers to pay the living wage, too.

[Mr Donohoe]

I am talking not so much about the living wage or the minimum wage as the number of hours people work a week. People cannot pay their keep if they are not working a particular number of hours a week. Regardless of what they are being paid an hour, they need the hours. The introduction of zero-hours contracts has surely been the biggest mistake.

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend rightly brings me back to zero-hours contracts and the problems and difficulties they create for people. Working a very low number of hours causes enormous hardship and difficulties: the difficulty of working an uncertain number of hours that can go up or down; the difficulty of claiming benefits to cover some of the gaps when going on and off benefits; and the difficulty in trying to navigate a system deliberately put in place by the Government to restrict what people, who are in work mostly, are paid in social security. I am glad he has made that point.

The use of agency workers, typically from eastern Europe, by companies in this country to undercut local staff is wholly unfair on the migrant workers who work for very low rates of pay and wholly unfair on local staff who are pushed out of the picture by being undercut. That is disastrous both for them and for the workers who are brought in. The knock-on effect is very damaging to the local economy too, because often any money earned, even in such low amounts, is sent back home and not spent locally and circulated around the local economy. The agencies have to be stopped. I am glad that it is Labour policy to take action to reduce the abuse perpetrated by such agencies. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) made the point very well: good businesses want to pay decent wages, but they are undercut in so many ways that they find it difficult to do so when unscrupulous employers exploit the system. Agencies’ use of overseas staff on low rates of pay is just one of the ways in which that happens.

The Bill introduces a penalty for employers who do not pay the national minimum wage. The problem is that there will be no improvement in enforcement. I mentioned the cuts in the number of staff at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.